In indirect aqueous printing, an aqueous ink is jetted onto an intermediate imaging surface, typically called a blanket, and the ink is partially dried on the blanket prior to transfixing the image to a media substrate, such as a sheet of paper. As it is important not to disturb the semi-wet ink, non-contact heating is employed to dry the ink. The non-contact heating may be radiant or convection heating; however, convection heating may be impractical due to size, cost, and noise.
Radiant heat, while fast acting and effective, is not color blind. It has been observed that for a given radiant source wavelength, different colors of ink exhibit different degrees of photothermal conversion. For example, black ink (“K”) absorbs heat and dries more quickly than cyan (“C”), magenta (“M”), and/or yellow (“Y”). A system and method that mitigates these differences, thereby enabling ink to dry more efficiently would be desirable.